UHC recognizes 10 academic medical center members with Quality Leadership Award

UHC has recognized 10 of its principal academic medical center (AMC) members with the 2012 UHC Quality Leadership Award. The award is given to AMCs that demonstrated excellence in delivering high-quality care as measured by the UHC Quality and Accountability Study, which UHC has conducted annually since 2005. This year's winners are:

1. University of Colorado Hospital
2. Emory University Hospital
3. The University of Kansas Hospital
4. University of Utah Health Care
5. Beaumont Health System (Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak)
6. Emory University Hospital Midtown
7. Mayo Clinic – Rochester, MN
8. NYU Langone Medical Center
9. The University of Arizona Medical Center
10. Denver Health

"Improving patient care and operational effectiveness is of paramount importance to every health care provider, and these organizations are the best of the best," said Irene M. Thompson, UHC president and chief executive officer. "Being named a UHC Quality Leadership Award winner is truly a reflection of everyone's efforts at the hospital—from the executives and board members to the physicians to the nurses and support staff."

UHC's distinctive Quality and Accountability Study was designed to help AMCs identify structures and processes associated with high performance in quality and safety across a broad spectrum of patient care activity. The Institute of Medicine's 6 domains of care—mortality, effectiveness, safety, equity, patient centeredness, and efficiency—were again used as a guide in structuring the study.

This year, 101 UHC member institutions were included in the analysis, which relied on data from the UHC Clinical Data Base/Resource Manager™, the UHC Core Measures Data Base, and the publicly reported Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems.

The award winners were announced at the UHC Annual Conference 2012 in Orlando, Fla., which drew leaders in quality and safety from more than 100 AMCs across the country.

"The nation's foremost minds in health care assemble at this conference to discuss ways to increase hospital performance and improve the overall quality of health care," said Richard P. Lofgren, MD, MPH, FACP, UHC senior vice president and chief clinical officer.